Living Well with Dementia: Feeling Empowered through Interaction with Their Social Environment.

This study was designed to advance our understanding of how feelings of empowerment in people living with dementia still residing at home can be promoted. We conducted qualitative interviews with 12 participants with mild-to-moderate stages of dementia in Germany and Spain as part of a European study on mindful design for dementia. A qualitative thematic content analysis was performed to elicit the key features of the experience reported by the interviewees. Three overarching categories were identified: the first category 'experiencing changes in personal life and coping with changes in life' covered losses and coping strategies; the second category 'retaining a sense of usefulness' included social participation and the need for activities with others; the third category 'feeling empowered' covered reflections on lifetime achievements, accomplishments in the present life, being in control and self-worth. Participants placed a strong emphasis on continuity and on the importance of making active decisions and meaningful social contributions. Empowerment within the person living with dementia was achieved through their interactions with their social environment, including the significance of communication about their needs and wishes and enabling shared decision-making and interactions with others in reciprocity.

Assessing the generalisability of a multicentre qualitative dementia research: the experience and challenges faced by the MinD project in Europe.

Background: Generalisation of findings is an important aspect of research and essential for evidence-based practice. While generalisation is common in quantitative research, there is a lack of generalisability in qualitative research. This paper presents the experience and challenges faced by the Designing for People with Dementia (MinD) project in meeting the requirements to strengthen the generalisation of findings on the lived experience of people living with dementia and their engagement to co-create designs to empower their everyday living.   Methods: Polit and Beck (2010)'s strategies to generalise qualitative findings were applied: (1) replication in sampling; (2) replication of studies; (3) meta-synthesis of findings; (4) reflexivity and conceptualization; (5) immersion with the data; and (6) thick description. Results: While it is possible to increase the generabilisabilty of qualitative evidence through the replication of the sampling to attain a large, heterogeneous sample in different and multiple contexts and environments; implementation of sound and robust research; conducting in-depth analysis and interpretation collaboratively for emergent themes; and meeting the thick description requirement, there are challenges that the project team faced in implementing some of the Polit and Beck's strategies because of the condition, namely dementia, that our participants are having. Other challenges faced were: the language and cultural diversity in the team; diverse  work and organisational procedures; and the inter-disciplinary differences relating to the methods of enquiry, approaches and techniques to conduct research. These challenges will need to be identified and addressed at the start of the project with a strong leadership to ensure a seamless journey to complete the project successfully. Trust between the researchers and participants, and time to build this trust are critical to recruitment and participation in the study; these factors are of utmost important in research involving participants with condition such as dementia.